Darkhotel is a suspected South Korean threat group that has targeted victims primarily in East Asia since at least 2004. The group's name is based on cyber espionage operations conducted via hotel Internet networks against traveling executives and other select guests. Darkhotel has also conducted spearphishing campaigns and infected victims through peer-to-peer and file sharing networks.[1][2][3]
24
Techniques58th pct
11
Tactics66th pct
0
Tools & malwareNone recorded
0
CampaignsNone recorded
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
Darkhotel has dropped an mspaint.lnk shortcut to disk which launches a shell script that downloads and executes a file.11
Execution63 detection rules
Standing G0012
Reach is how much of ATT&CK this group touches. Coverage is how well defended each thing it does is, as a median per technique rather than a total — a total would just restate the reach. Each figure is ranked against all 176 ATT&CK groups only where that population actually spreads. Where most of the population shares one value, a percentile would rank the tie instead of the entity, so the raw value is shown and no rank is claimed.
Reach
Techniques2458th pct
58th percentile · 58% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many Enterprise techniques or fewer.
Tactics1166th pct
66th percentile · 66% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many tactics spanned or fewer.
Tools & malware0Bottom 9%
9th percentile · 91% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more tools and malware.
Campaigns089% tie · 4 values
89% of the population shares a single value across only 4 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Coverage
Rules / technique9.5medBottom 22%
22nd percentile · 78% of 176 ATT&CK groups have more detection rules per technique.
Tests / technique6medTop 16%
84th percentile · 84% of 176 ATT&CK groups have this many atomic tests per technique or fewer.
Data comps / technique4med65% tie · 12 values
65% of the population shares a single value across only 12 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Mitigations / technique0med43% tie · 11 values
43% of the population shares a single value across only 11 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
5 of 8 axes carry an honest rank on this page. Coverage medians are taken across this group’s 24 Enterprise techniques.
Range
Technique Campaign use over its cumulative rule count.
Detects when AppLocker "Audit only" enforcement mode reports that an Application, DLL, Script, MSI, or Packaged-App would have been blocked if AppLocker "Enforce rules" enforcement mode was enabled.
The following analytic detects the execution of tools commonly exploited by cybercriminals, such as those used for unauthorized access, network scanning, privilege escalation, password dumping or data exfiltration. (...)
Detects the Linux-specific execution chain of the plain-crypto-js malicious npm dependency by Axios NPM package, including payload download via curl and detached execution using nohup and python3. (...)
Detects the macOS-specific execution chain of the plain-crypto-js malicious npm dependency in Axios NPM Package, including AppleScript execution via osascript, payload download, permission modification, execution, and cleanup.
The following analytic detects the creation of a batch file (.bat) within the Windows system directory tree, specifically in the System32 or SysWOW64 folders. (...)
The following analytic detects the use of CertUtil.exe with the 'decode' argument, which may indicate an attempt to decode a previously encoded file, potentially containing malicious payloads. (...)
This analytic detects potential reconnaissance activities on Cisco ASA devices by identifying execution of multiple information-gathering "show" commands within a short timeframe. (...)
This analytic detects unexpected outbound network connections initiated by known webserver processes such as `httpd.exe`, `nginx.exe`, or `tomcat.exe` to common file sharing or public content hosting services like GitHub, Discord CDN, Transfer.sh, or Pastebin. (...)
The following analytic detects file downloads involving executable, archive, or scripting-related file types that are commonly used in malware delivery. (...)
Michael Haag, Nasreddine Bencherchali, Splunk, Talos NTDR
2025-07-17
2026-05-13
93db24a0-fd21-45d7-9daf-84afd5a8cca2
Splunk
The following analytic detects potential reverse shell activity by identifying connections involving ports commonly associated with remote access tools, shell listeners, or tunneling utilities. (...)
The following analytic detects connections with a high Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) threat confidence score, indicating potentially malicious behavior within encrypted traffic. (...)
This analytic identifies Snort intrusion signatures that have been triggered by ten or more distinct internal IP addresses within a one-hour window. (...)